commissioner gordon

As you might expect, there is nothing that upsets CA's resident Batmanologist more than someone being wrong about Batman on the Internet -- truly the greatest of sins -- so this week, we're tackling a handful of misconceptions about the Dark Knight! Does Batman really only use his money to beat up crooks without addressing the root causes of crime? Watch and find out!

If you've been keeping up with "Endgame," the current story raging through Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Danny Miki and FCO Plascencia's Batman, then you've seen a lot of stuff going on. I mean things are apocalyptically bad in Gotham City on a scale that they haven't been since... well, since the last big Batman story. Still, it's pretty rough out there, what with the millions of zombie-like citizens infected with airborne Joker toxin. But in all the action of the latest issue, you may have missed the most important part: Jim Gordon's ringtone.

It might seem like a minor detail, but it's actually a pretty significant piece of the ongoing Batman mythology -- mainly because I suggested it on Twitter back in November, and now that it's canon, I will never, ever shut up about it.

This week marks the premiere of Gotham, the new Fox television show focusing on Jim Gordon's first year as a cop in Batman's hometown, and the origins of young Bruce Wayne and the people who will one day become the greatest enemies of his war on crime. That the show exists at all is a testament to how strong Jim Gordon and the rest of the Gotham city Police Department are as heroes in their own rights.

So if Gotham has you in the mood to read about Gordon, Harvey Bullock and the rest of the GCPD -- or if you just want to dive into some solid Batman comics where the spotlight isn't entirely on the Dark Knight -- then I've got some suggestions for great comics about Gotham's top cops!

For a certain generation of TV viewers, Bob Hastings will always be Lt. Elroy Carpenter from McHale's Navy. For another generation, he'll forever be the voice of Police Commissioner Gordon. We may not have known his name or even thought about who was providing Gordon's voice on Batman: The Animated Series, but for our entire lives, his voice will be the voice we hear in our heads when we read a comic with Gordon in it.

Hastings died Monday after a long battle with prostate cancer, according to the Burbank Leader. He was 89.

As Batman: Arkham Knight, the next entry in the popular video game franchise about Batman beating the criminally insane into submission in asylums of increasingly improbable sizes and complexity, draws nearer, we're starting to get to the point where we're getting a steady stream of information about the game. Today, with the release of a new set of screenshots, we got some of the most interesting news of all.

According to the latest screens, after appearances as a voice in a headset in the past three games, Barbara Gordon will finally be appearing as Oracle. That's big news for fans fans, but to be honest, that stuff about the Batmobile shooting you out of the roof like James Bond's ejector seat will probably have a bigger impact on gameplay.

In the pages of Batman, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Danny Miki and FCO Plascencia are retelling the origin of Batman for the modern DC Universe with "Zero Year." Told over the course of a year, "Zero Year" is divided in to three arcs, each representing a facet of Gotham City and Batman's growth into a superhero, and it's been wild right from the start. For each arc, ComicsAlliance is going in-depth with Snyder to find out more about how the story came together and what these elements mean, and with "Dark City" finishing just a few weeks ago, it's time once again for our conversation to resume.

In the second part of our interview (you can read the first part here), Snyder and I discuss Batman's relationship with Jim Gordon, the Riddler's role as Batman's first major foe, and just why he has those mutton chops.

He's spent most of his career protecting California -- first as an angsty teen on The O.C. and more recently as a cop on South LAnd, but it seems Benjamin McKenzie's next stop is Gotham as a young James "Jim" Gordon. This isn't McKenzie's first rodeo either, as he voiced a young Bruce Wayne in Warner Bros. Animation's 2011 Batman Year One animated feature, which adapted the comic of the same name by writer Frank Miller, artist David Mazzucchelli, colorist Richmond Lewis and letterer Todd Klein.

You may not know Danny Cannon's name, but if you have ever watched CSI:, odds are you've seen his work. Cannon has directed 25 episodes of that long-running CBS series in addition to serving as executive producer on The CW's Nikita.

Now, according to Deadline he's in line to direct the pilot episode for Fox's upcoming Gotham series, which may more may not include a young Bruce Wayne. He'll also be an executive producer.

Scott Kolins has been illustrating tales of DC Comics' iconic characters for more than 20 years. Perhaps best known for his collaboration with writers Geoff Johns and Bryan Augustyn on The Flash, the artist has worked on Wonder Woman, Superman/Batman, The Legion Of Superheroes and Young Justice for DC, among others. In recent years Kolins has tried his hand at writing and illustrating stories, most notably the Solomon Grundy seven issue miniseries in 2009, spinning out of the publisher's Blackest Night event. Now Kolins is taking on writing and art duties once again in this week's Legends Of The Dark Knight Chapter 70, the latest story in the digital first series of out-of-continuity tales focusing largely on Batman's early years.

In the first issue of this this four part story, titled "Hell's Bells," Batman and the Gotham City Police Department converge on the same suspect, but a trigger happy member of the force sets his sights on Batman instead. DC Comics has provided ComicsAlliance with a four page preview of the story, which you can check out below.

If you were paying attention to the Internet while you were watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Tuesday night, then you saw the latest volley in the ongoing war between DC and Marvel for control of mass media. This time, it was an announcement, perfectly timed to coincide with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s debut, of a new television series focusing on the origin story of Gotham City's Commissioner Gordon. And as you might expect, like a lot of people, I've got an opinion on the matter.

Look: We all know that there's nothing that says "entitled Internet fan" more than rushing to breathlessly praise or angrily condemn a piece of media that does not technically exist yet, but as long as people are going to be talking about it, we might as well take our shots. And since I'm someone who clearly hates everything, I'm going to go ahead and take my position: doing a TV show about Jim Gordon in the years before he meets Batman is not a very good idea. Now let's fight about it!

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